The story about how secure boot for Windows 8, part of UEFI, will hinder the use of non-signed binaries and operating systems, like Linux, has registered at Redmond as well. The company posted about it on the Building Windows 8 blog - but didn't take any of the worries away. In fact, Red Hat's Matthew Garrett, who originally broke this story, has some more information - worst of which is that Red Hat has received confirmation from hardware vendors that some of them will not allow you to disable secure boot.

"Grub or LILO bases boot loaders would allow regular non signed kernels to boot. This is after getting the keys through reverse engineering and all more or less in a similar fashion like the DVD scene played out through DeCSS."

This is a misunderstanding of the public key cryptography involved. Reverse engineering may reveal bugs in the bios which might be exploited, however all the keys present in the firmware are public knowledge. Even if the firmware is completely open source, it would not help break the private keys.

DVDs on the other hand are not cryptographically sound because the encryption keys used must be accessible on the end user device (otherwise the DVD would not play).

"2) legally through the anti-trust process."

Maybe someone with a legal background can provide some legal insight?

"On my side, personally, I would refrain from purchasing any PC motherboard or laptop that does not allow disabling this feature."

Same here, but we'd be such a minority that the large OEMs may not take notice. The key is to get the major media to pick it up.